Ron Levett's memories, from the early 1930's, when he lived in the small village of Alfriston in Sussex Near the end of a beautiful summer, the Battle of Britain as it came to be known, started. Our evacuees were re-evacuated, this time to Wales. We, I suppose were expendable. We had never seen aeroplanes flying this high before, enough to cause vapour trails, so we failed to recognise them. When we saw the opposing trails and heard the rattle of cannon and machine guns, we realised that the battle had started. All sorts of rumours were rife. One was that when an enemy aircraft made a circle in the sky, this was a marker for the dive-bombers. Total rubbish of course, the trails blew away too quickly for this. Numerous aircraft were shot down in the district, both friend and foe. A Spitfire crashed at Lullington, about 100yds from Lullington Cottages. We all went to have a look. The pilot was badly injured and died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. Mabel Norman and Dr. Terry attended to him. The aircraft was gradually being consumed by fire, when there was a popping noise and spurts of flame. We all took cover thinking that it was ammunition exploding, but found that it was Glycol from the radiator that was burning. One night a Wellington bomber flew up the valley above Lullington and into a hill at the end of the valley. I believe it was foggy at the time. The rear gunner was the only one to survive the crash, but he died in hospital. Another night a Heinkel 111 was heard flying low over the village, then flew on to crash on the hill behind Seaford, near the cemetery. One member of the crew bailed out over Alfriston, his parachute failed to open, and he hit the hill above Cradle Valley. He is buried in Hailsham Cemetery. A Messerschmitt 109 crashed near the brickyard at Berwick Station and buried itself so deeply that it was impossible to recover the plane or the pilot. One morning a Dornier DO215 flew low over the village. (By this time our aircraft recognition was quite good). It was so low that I could see a crewmember through the perspex. It flew on up to the disused aerodrome at Milton Street and dropped one bomb, which threw a large quantity of mud across the A27, which had to be removed before traffic could proceed. There was a strong ammonia smell in the mud from the explosive. One morning about seven o'clock while we were all still in bed except granddad, who was in the outside toilet, a bomber dropped a stick of bombs across the village. The first bomb was near the Sanctuary, and woke us all up. After that the noise of explosions got nearer and nearer until the house was rocking and there were sounds of things falling and glass breaking. Then they receded and eventually stopped. When we looked outside we found that the nearest bomb had hit the garden wall of Quince Cottage, which is about 50 yards from our house. It had blown in all the windows on that side of the house, all the hanging tiles from the back corner and some of the roof tiles. The conservatory was destroyed at the side of the building. The toilet door had blown open, bending the hatch double and hitting granddad in the face. Luckily this caused only minor bruising. The next bomb had landed in the road opposite the filling station (now the car park) belonging to Tom Harmer, blowing the glass tops from all the petrol pumps. At the other end of the filling station there was a large wooden hut being used as a billet by troops. One bomb landed on this and some were killed. The story at the time was that the bomber had been turned back from a London raid, had seen the cooking fires from the army mess rooms at the garage and had unloaded his bomb racks before flying back to his base. Ron Levett, 2001
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